Jean-Baptiste Huynh

Beauty

Jean-Baptiste Huynh
Beauty

5 June 2019 — 21 July 2019

Strategic partner of the museum: Mastercard
With the support of: Embassy of France in the Russian Federation, the French Institute

As part of the XI Moscow International Biennale of Fashion and Style in Photography 2019 the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents an exhibition by celebrated French photographer Jean-Baptiste Huynh.

The museum already acquainted the Russian public with the work of this photographer in the exhibition ‘Portraits and Still Life’, one of the most striking revelations of the 2004 Photobiennale.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh studied with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. World recognition came in 1996 with his first major project entitled ‘Immortels’ (1996), a series that demonstrated his remarkable talent as a portraitist with his depiction of masters from the French Academy. In the same year Huynh was awarded the Fondation Hewlett Packard France prize for his series of images from Vietnam. In 1997 Huynh won the Villa Medicis Hors les Murs award and received a special mention at the Prix Kodak de la critique photographique.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s next project ‘Yeux’ (2002), presented by the European House of Photography in Paris and featuring 100 portraits of outstanding 20th-century photographers and artists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Jeanloup Sieff, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, brought him recognition as one of the leading portraitists worldwide.

The photographer’s most celebrated series were featured in the ‘Beauty’ exhibition: ‘Nature’, ‘Monochrome’, ‘Animals’, ‘Insects’, ‘Japan’ and ‘Woman’. His photographs are a hymn to universal and timeless beauty. Huynh’s work is distinguished by its laconic means of expression and extreme emotional saturation. He displays beauty without ‘prettiness’, achieving his goal without sensational effect.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh describes his project as follows: ‘As a visual artist and photographer it is natural that I interpret reality through the use of light. Light has nourished my work from the very beginning and remains to this day the focus of my photographic study. How can we enhance what is beautiful? How can we enhance what isn’t beautiful? Why? Do beauty and ugliness actually exist? At the same time I made the film ‘Beauty’, recording a series of interviews with very different celebrities: an actress, a research neurologist, a poet, musician, couturier, architect, gallery owner, famous collector and model... I asked each of them, what is beauty and what is beauty represented by the artist?’

Jean-Baptiste Huynh lives and works in Paris, exhibiting in major museums and galleries all over the world. His oeuvre features in the collections of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC, Paris), Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP, Paris), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow), Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal) and Fondazione Italiana per la Fotografia (Turin), as well as important private and corporate collections.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh is the author of fifteen books, including ‘Immortels’ (1996), ‘Intime Infini’ (1998) ‘Yeux’ (2001), ‘Univers’ (2002), ‘Japon’ (2003), ‘Mali’ (2003), ‘Inde’ (2004), ‘Lumière’ (2012), ‘Nature’ (2016), ‘Mains’ (2017), and ‘Infinis d’Asie’ (2019).